The piston system accounts for roughly half of the mechanical friction of an internal combustion engine, thus it is important to optimize. Different thermally sprayed cylinder liners were investigated in order to optimize the frictional impact of the contact between cylinder liner and piston ring/piston. A novel tribometer test setup was used to scan through different materials at different running conditions. Based on these results a full-scale single cylinder test was performed to validate the results from the rig. A comparison of the results between the tribometer and the engine shows the importance of the ratio between viscous and mechanical friction losses.